Students’ learning needs and preferences are being recognized as being more diverse, which is why the demand for UDL (Universal Design for Learning) is becoming a greater focus in curriculum design. We’ve seen many exciting UDL activities in Blackboard course shells. Blackboard offers a wide variety of UDL tools that can address the variety of learning needs and preferences. However, even though everyone wants to make their courses UDL friendly, many find that applying it to their courses is beyond reach.
Shelley Moore’s Transforming Inclusive Education is great video that puts UDL in perspective and demonstrates that minor adjustments can have major benefits. For example, closed captioning a 3-hour class for one student was also very popular with many other students in the class. By catering to one student we offered the same benefit to all of them, which many took advantage of.
How have you added UDL content into your courses?